The "summer rains" we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless, but are first and foremost
blatantly illegitimate.
* It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity.
* It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns.
* It is not legitimate to penetrate Syria's airspace.
* It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament.
A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization.
The harsher the steps, the more monstrous and stupid they become, the more the moral underpinnings for them are removed and the stronger the impression that the Israeli government has lost its nerve.
What we are doing now in Gaza has nothing to do with freeing
Gilad Shalit. It is a widescale act of vengeance, the kind that the IDF and Shin Bet have wanted to conduct for some time, mostly motivated by the deep frustration that the army commanders feel about their impotence against the Qassams and the daring Palestinian guerilla raid.
The only wise and restrained voice heard so far was that of
the soldier's father, Noam Shalit.
We kidnapped civilians and they captured a soldier, we are a state and they are a terror organization.
Collective punishment is illegitimate and it does not have a smidgeon of intelligence.
We are bombing and shelling, darkening and destroying, imposing a siege and kidnapping like the worst of terrorists and nobody breaks the silence to ask, what the hell for, and according to what right?
A Black Flag
by Gideon Levy
July 03, 2006
A Black Flag